One of my colleagues recently sent me this link. It’s a promotional video for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, featuring several celebrities and high-powered business people endorsing the appointed incumbent in his election campaign.

Which led me to say, “What the heck?! I’d like to know how/why all those people got involved with that.”

The end of the video gives a clue. Under pictures of bonus footage of Brian Wilson doing “the Hammer dance” and will.i.am staring intently into the camera, the screen states:

Paid for by SAN FRANCISCANS FOR JOBS AND GOOD GOVERNMENT, supporting Ed Lee for Mayor 2011, with major funding by Ron Conway and Sean Parker. Not authorized by a candidate or committee controlled by a candidate.

Ron Conway is a venture capitalist. In fact, he’s one of the tech world’s biggest seed funders.A recent Business Insider profile called “The Scariest Man in Silicon Valley” gets its title from the sheer amount of power Conway wields over whether companies succeed or fail. Sean Parker is a high-profile trendmaker. He was the face of Napster, an early contributor to Facebook, and Justin Timberlake played him in the movie “The Social Network.” Conway and Parker seem to be something of a Mr. Inside/Mr. Outside combination. Kingmakers. And for some reason they evidently really want to see Mayor Lee stay in charge of San Francisco.

Celebrities rarely make promotional videos for free. I don’t know if MC Hammer and will.i.am like Mayor Lee so much that they just decided to donate their time and fame to his campaign. I do know that Davaran and Wilson capitalized on the San Francisco Giants’ success last year by making commercials, like this one. I also know that Mayor Lee helped broker the payroll tax break that made Twitter the anchor business on San Francisco’s mid-Market corridor. And I know that Mayor Lee’s campaign has been able to raise a lot of money very quickly … enough for his supporters to, in part, distribute an “unauthorized biography” door-to-door as, perhaps, history’s heaviest campaign flier.

While unusual, and arresting, none of this is particularly surprising. In my experience there are three tried and true things that help win elections: incumbency, money, and connections. The bottom line is the person who has the best ideas, motives, and leadership seems to be of secondary importance when it comes time for people to punch the ballot card. Commercial manipulation simply has too much power.

Mayor Ed Lee may or may not be the best candidate to run San Francisco. His track record in public service and his leadership in office have been appreciated by many beyond the tech, sports, and entertainment worlds. I’ve met him and spoken with him at length – you can hear our conversation here (and a shorter version here) – and it’s clear that he is very knowledgeable about the city and has plans for its future development. That’s part of why it’s so frustrating to see the full-force political razzle-dazzle in this campaign. It’s unmatchable by other candidates (interviews available here) who don’t have similarly deep-pocketed supporters, even if their ideas are equally worth hearing.

Until that playing field is leveled, we’ll find celebrities and sports stars doing the work of the wealthy to convince us to vote their way. That is not how democracy should be conducted.

You can hear Ben Trefny’s interviews with all 16 candidates for mayor of San Francisco Tuesday and Wednesday at 5pm on KALW’s Crosscurrents.